Rainmen rookie earning minutes in shut-down role

Halifax Rainmen rookie Darrin Dorsey is being used more like a veteran this season with the National Basketball League team. (ADRIEN VECZAN / Staff)

It’s a good thing Darrin Dorsey likes a challenge.

The Halifax Rainmen guard, playing his first season of professional basketball, isn’t being eased into action in non-pressure situations the way some rookies are handled with kid gloves during their transition period to make sure they’re put into position to succeed.

Instead, Halifax coach Josep (Pep) Claros routinely sends the 24-year-old from Phoenix, Ariz., out onto the floor to shut down some of the most skilled offensive players in the National Basketball League of Canada.

"I like my role on the team," Dorsey said after practice Wednesday. "If somebody’s scoring, if they’ve got a top scorer, Coach tells me even before the game or when he’s about to sub me in that that’s my priority to rattle him and shake him up."

It’s not that the six-foot-two Dorsey isn’t qualified for the assignment. In his junior year at Dakota Wesleyan, an NAIA school in South Dakota, he was his conference’s co-defensive player of the year and had a school-record 93 steals.

But he also averaged 18.3 points and 5.1 rebounds while being named an NAIA All-American and the Great Plains Athletic Conference’s player of the year for 2009-10.

He was well on his way to duplicating those feats at Berea College in Kentucky last season when a broken bone in his left foot cut short his senior year.

With the Rainmen, where he’s been asked to sacrifice his scoring to curtail someone else’s, he’s averaging 5.2 points a game while battling for minutes behind starters Taliek Brown and Joey Haywood and top backcourt reserve Chris Hagan.

"It was tough at first," Dorsey said, referring to the adjustment in roles. "I’m used to having the ball in my hands the majority of the games, making decisions offensively, defensively.

"But we have a bunch of good players on this team. I just try to learn from the guys who are in front of me so one day I can be in their position."

Dorsey has started six of Halifax’s 26 games, averaging 14.5 minutes, since he earned a training camp invitation based on his performance at the NBL combine in August.

Rainmen owner Andre Levingston, who doubles as the club’s general manager, said the team’s second-youngest player has grown on him since camp.

"He’s just solid. He doesn’t make a whole lot of mistakes, he always plays defence, he can hit the big three when you need it and he locks up the best guards in our league most nights. He plays his role very, very well."

That doesn’t mean that every night’s a breeze.

A week ago in Summerside, he drew the task of shadowing Storm guard Stephen McDowell, who promptly dropped three quick buckets en route to a 29-point outing that sparked Summerside’s 102-92 upset win. Dorsey’s night was over after 5½ minutes.

On Saturday, though, Claros offered a reprieve by starting him opposite McDowell again as the Storm visited the Metro Centre.

This time, Dorsey held McDowell to four points during his 17 minutes of suffocating defensive pressure. McDowell finished with 17 points but Halifax claimed a 110-97 victory.

"That just stuck in my mind, those first six points (last Thursday) caused him to feel comfortable," said Dorsey. "When Coach told me I was starting against him on Saturday, I made it a point that I wasn’t gonna have a repeat of that."

It’s that resolve that has helped him emerge as one of the Rainmen’s most underrated performers and put to rest any doubts about his place on the team.

Levingston admits that early in the season he contemplated making a move at the guard position that would have come at Dorsey’s expense.

"It’s funny . . . but every time we looked to make a change there, we ended up saying, ‘We can’t make that change.’ And every time we play, he lets us know why we can’t get rid of him."